Monday, June 16, 2014

Tonight, after the lights are out, we talk about death and the things that have changed us. How we are no longer people who use the phrase "if I die." There are certain things, illusions perhaps, that have been snuffed.

Hard weekend, bad news about friends. The price treatment demands is high, and there should be some guarantee, but there isn't one. This makes me want to bang my fist on an oak table somewhere, crumpled papers in my hand. "Give us what you promised."

On Friday, my therapist (who was just finishing her own treatment when I became her patient four years ago) said to me: "We never talked about what would happen, how you would feel, if I had a recurrence."

(The answer: sad, mad.)

The scent of the blooming jasmine on my nightstand permeated the room while I imagined those snuffed out things, dissolving in a cloud of fairy dust, perhaps forever. The fallacy of immortality: poof! The belief in something after: pop! The possibility of destiny, of not being alone, of anything but cold randomness, gone, all gone.

I am saying this while his voice gets softer around the edges. He is nearly asleep.

Saturday we went to see The Fault in Our Stars, just after reading an obituary for a nineteen year old boy. Melanoma.

Gone, all gone.

In the dark we talk about after. It scares him, he says. "But it's just nothing. Just like being asleep," I said. "Like before being born," he said.

After he's sleeping so deeply his leg is twitching every now and again, I look up hairstyles in my phone. Because if it's all a nothing I might as well watch a tutorial on finger waves, I guess.

Tomorrow, off for a blood draw, EKG. Getting cleared for surgery. I'm giving recon another try. It shouldn't be called "reconstruction." It's simply construction, or maybe even deconstruction.

We learned about deconstruction in 11th grade, and I've been intimidated by it ever since. We used it while reading Dubliners.

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

The cottonwood seeds are ending for the season. I only just learned what they're called.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Now that I'm officially restarting reconstruction (first fat graft surgery scheduled for the end of the month. Yay?) I'm looking forward to a point way off in the future when I will get my new nipples. My skin is likely too fried from radiation to do the "skin origami" to make a little protrusion, so I'll be tromp l'oeil-ing it.

Which made me think about The Nipple Artist, art history in general, and all the nipples that have been painted, mostly by men, over the centuries. AND THEN I thought, which artist, alive or dead, would I want to paint my nipples? Totally reasonable question, I know.

While I sort it out myself (Botticelli -- no. Rubens -- no. Michelangelo -- HELL no, have you looked at his paintings of women?) do you have any ideas, dear reader?

This may seem completely ridiculous -- why bother with fake nipples? For one thing, I have realized after looking at hundreds of reconstruction photos, that the nipples might be of the eyes of the torso. Or maybe not the eyes, but possibly the eyebrows.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

I wish this never happened. I wish this never happened. I wish this never happened. I wish this never happened. I WISH THIS NEVER HAPPENED. I wish this never happened. I wish this never happened I wish this never ever happened I wish this never happened I wish this never happened I wish this never happened never fucking happened I wish this never happened I wish this never happened I think I want this never to have happened I wish with all three wishes that this never happened. I wish this never happened.

Cancer is not a blessing. Not a fucking blessing.

It is a motherfucking piece of shit rat bastard piece of rat shit with opossum vomit on top. It's a cake made of chemicals. Shit fuck mother fuck ass bollocks bloody bitch.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

It's National Cancer Survivors Day, and I feel weird about it. I feel weird about the words.

The word survivor, and implicit glorification of those given the title, is difficult for me. Surviving conjures up ideas of triumph, winning. A winner necessitates a loser. So what does that make of those who don't survive -- the 40,000 women who die of breast cancer annually in the US. Have they lost? Surviving doesn't feel so good when it's turned into a winner/loser dichotomy.

It's also false. Me living doesn't actually depend on another person dying. And me living doesn't mean I've earned it, won it. It doesn't mean I deserve it more than anyone else.

There's also the thing about the battle, the fight. Someone survives their fight with cancer, or loses a long battle.

It never felt like that to me. I wasn't fighting. I wanted to stay alive more than anything else in world, but I was being obedient, listening to the advice of my doctors. Taking the prescribed things, submitting to scalpels and needles, making my way slowly and stiffly forward. Because there was nothing else to do. Time marches on, and the living go with it.

Sometimes I wonder What would fighting have looked like? What does it mean to me? I instantly imagine a Komen-ified version of Xena Warrior Princess. A one breasted fuchsia-haired amazon, pink crystal sword slicing through malignancies.

We are all of us and none of us survivors. Surviving is temporary. Because life is.

That old line about how no one makes it out of life alive runs through my head on an almost daily basis.

"This is temporary," was a mantra that got me through the pain, the sadness. Through the hardest no hair days and the longest sleepless nights. May they be my words for life, in good times and bad.

To any who have walked this same road, and those who will the
future, I stand with you because we existed somewhere out there
together. Maybe we hitched the same stretch of highway, maybe we both squatted in the same bushes. Maybe you left a cairn for me, or I for you. Maybe we both clasped at the same stars, and were bitten by the same snake.

Hello!

I'm Emily, a writer and artist living in Jersey City, NJ, dealing with the aftermath of cancer as a young adult. This blog isn't for the faint of heart, the squeamish, or sensitive. It's for the kickers, the screamers, and the drinkers.